Sunday, 10 February 2013

S.J.Res.23 -- One Hundred Seventh Congress of the United States of America

Joint Resolution - To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.

AT THE FIRST SESSION

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Wednesday, the third day of January, two thousand and one

Joint Resolution

To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.

Whereas, on September 11, 2001, acts of treacherous violence were committed against the United States and its citizens; and

Whereas, such acts render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad; and

Whereas, in light of the threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by these grave acts of violence; and

Whereas, such acts continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States; and

Whereas, the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This joint resolution may be cited as the `Authorization for Use of Military Force'.

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, orpersonshe determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

(b) War Powers Resolution Requirements- (1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS- Nothing in this resolution supercedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Vice President of the United States and

President of the Senate.

"Yea" votes in support of the above-worded resolution : 420

"Nay" votes in disagreement with granting such authority to order executive action :

1

Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank our ranking member and my friend for yielding time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today really with a very heavy heart, one that is filled with sorrow for the families and the loved ones who were killed and injured this week. Only the most foolish and the most callous would not understand the grief that has really gripped our people and millions across the world.This unspeakable act on the United States has forced me, however, to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God for direction.

September 11 changed the world. Our deepest fears now haunt us.

Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.

This is a very complex and complicated matter.This resolution will pass, although we all know that the President can wage a war even without it. However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint.

Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let us step back for a moment. Let us just pause for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.I have agonized over this vote, but I came to grips with it today and I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said,

Right, I'm fed up with this: NO American Citizens have been killed by drone strikes.

Accidentally, or otherwise.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.Lets sort this out once and for all:""All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. "Al-Aulaqi was born in the United States to parents from Yemen, while his father was doing graduate work at US universities."Birthers, note: He is NOT therefore, a Natural Born Citizen. And his implicit naturalisation, appears to have been obtained years later by fraud; if indeed if ever was, which I am increasingly beginning to doubt as this takes on all the hallmarks of another National Security set-up.

Neither one of his parents were US Nationals, he claimed at various times when it suited him to have US Citizenship, but there seems to be not documentary proof of this, at least not in the public domain.Already, AT BEST, he is a Yemeni national with a claim to dual US Citizenship "Al-Aulaqi was born in 1971 in New Mexico in the United States, where his father was doing graduate studies. "Prove it."In 1978, when he was seven years old, he returned with his family to Yemen. "He is a Yemeni national with two Yemeni parents who at various times has claimed to have been born in both Yemen and New Mexico, claiming both Yemeni and US Citizenship and maybe travelling under both on different passports for different occasions. There is no proof of either claim - but he is DEFINITELY a Yemeni National, with two Yemeni parents who grew up and spend most of his life in Yemen."He lived in Yemen for 11 years, where he studied at Azal Modern School."

Can we do better than that to clear this up? What if he was born (as is claimed) in New Mexico but there was a fire and they lost all the birth records?

In other words, if the dates are found to match up and he can be reasonably estimated to have been born while his mother and father were studying at college, but no actual documentation can be found that definitively affirms that, does he have a reasonable claim to make a case?

Do we have any case law on this?

As it happens, actually - yes. We do.The clause's meaning was tested again in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark 169 U.S.649 (1898). The Supreme Court held that under the Fourteenth Amendment a man born within the United States to Chinese citizens who have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and are carrying on business in the United States—and whose parents were not employed in a diplomatic or other official capacity by a foreign power—was a citizen of the United States. Subsequent decisions have applied the principle to the children of foreign nationals of non-Chinese descent.[19]So, let's lawyer this one - the "official version" - systematically, statement by statement and see if we can't give the guy a break, here.

Al-Aulaqi was born in the United States to parents from Yemen, He isn't automatically an American at birth, because neither of his parents are.

Were either (or both) of his parents "[Yemeni]citizens who have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and ...carrying on business in the United States...?"
while his father was doing graduate work at US universities.
Evidently they weren't. "Work" in this case implies study, implies education. The actual work may or may not involve or consist of paid employment but that's totally irrelevant, even if it is the case, which is unlikely.

Neither his father nor his mother can be said to be conducting "business" to support themselves - they are not in the country - primarily at least - for the sake of a job, even though they obviously do have ecconomic input and interactions and their admission into the country would be granted only if they fulfilled a certain very different set of criteria.

They were clearly NOT resident in the US on an open-ended basis, nor was their stay in the country expected to be permanent or last beyond a certain point.His father, Nasser al-Aulaqi, was a Fulbright Scholar earned a master's degree in agricultural economics at New Mexico State University in 1971,

Nowhere do we get told where he earned his undergraduate first degree prior to this... which is a strange omission.

We might also note that the geological composition of Yemen is comprised almost entirely of enormous rocks and bare ground with 26 million desperately poor people, clinging round its coastline in fishing communities - the issue here is not merely the fact of there being no workable soil and next to no water (as with most of the rest of the Arabian Peninsular)... It's that next to none of the land for much of the country is anything close to being flat.

When I said "big rocks", I meant really meant "big rocks", rather than mountains or sand dunes.

it's a strange subject to major in - agriculture surely can never be economic in a land where nothing is able to grow.

Which is surely one of the many reasons it's so desperately poor...

received a doctorate at the University of Nebraska, and worked at the University of Minnesota from 1975 to 1977.

In 1978, when he was seven years old, [Al-Awlaki] returned with his family to Yemen.

That's clear and unambiguous. Both parents were in the country on temporary student visas granted for the purpose of education, with no expectation that they would remain permanantly resident beyond the end of the final course and not therefore domiciled in the US.

Everyone clear? Anyone disagree?

Can I get a second on that source?The Albuquerque Journal said New Mexico State University's Fall 2002 alumni newsletter notes that Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki, was named a distinguished international alumnus. The newspaper said the elder Awlaki earned a bachelor's degree in agricultural economics from NMSU in 1969 and a master's in 1971, when Anwar al-Awlaki [was born].He eventually obtained a doctorate in agricultural economics at the University of Nebraska and from 1975 to 1977 he was a researcher and faculty member at the University of Minnesota before returning to Yemen in 1978, the Journal said.Source: UPI
Done.
"In 1991 Al-Aulaqi returned to the U.S state of Colorado to attend college. He earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University (1994), where he was president of the Muslim Student Association."That'll certainly attract attention in Denver....

And Denver, as previously noted is, Spook Central.

Aside from being the home city and pricinple command and training hub for the US Air Force, housing NORAD, Cheyanne Mountain, about a dozen unsolved quasi-Satanic Ritual Abuse murders facilitated by Aurora Police Department and the Jefferson County Sherrif's Department, school board and others, DIA are all over the International Airport as well with giant underground Nuclear Doomsday Facilities hidden in plain site so everyone will just ignore them. Which mostly works.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "He was likely recruited about this time".

Or earlier - if CIA had worked with his folks in the 70s, they may have even paid his plane fare over to infiltrate campuses and set up recruitment for Jihad in Bosnia and Kosovo and Chechnya - MI5 were doing EXACTLY that in EXACTLY this time period in Leeds and other cities in the North of England. This is the same year FBI were chasing Ramzi Yousef halfway round the world."He attended the university on a foreign student visa and a government scholarship from Yemen, apparently by claiming to be born in that country, according to a former U.S. security agent."He is now 20 and never claims to be anything other than a Yemeni national and entered the US on a Student Visa to satisfy INS."He spent a summer of his college years training with the Afghan mujahideen"I can't believe I even need to say this: CIA."In June 2002, a Denver federal judge signed an arrest warrant for al-Aulaqi for PASSPORT FRAUD."Just show 'em your birth certificate....? Note, he is unable to prove he is a US Citizen when applying for a US passport to travel overseas - he presumably travelled to Kabul previously on his Yemeni passport or a possibly CIA fake one."On October 9, the Denver U.S. Attorney's Office filed a motion to dismiss its complaint, and vacate the arrest warrant. Prosecutors believed that they lacked sufficient evidence of a crime, according to U.S. Attorney Dave Gaouette, who authorized its withdrawal."I have only once before encountered ANYONE with the surname Gaouette in my ENTIRE life, and he was fired as Rear Admiral Commanding the Stennis Battlegroup patrolling the Strait of Hormuz by Panetta 72 hours prior to a Presidential election for evidence impilicating him in a military coup to oust Obama and provoke a war with Iran;SPECULATION: CIA is a family company. IF this US Attourney is (say) Rear Admiral (Ret.) Gaoutte's brother, this Gaoutte at the US Attourney's office appears to have arrived on the scene to smooth things over with the Judge and his visa situation."Al-Aulaqi had listed Yemen rather than the United States as his place of birth on his 1990 application for a U.S. Social Security number, soon after arriving in the US. "The bizarre thing is if you put Yemen down (on the application), it would be harder to get a Social Security number than to say you are a native-born citizen of Las Cruces," Gaouette said."I know it isn't just me: that's complete hogwash. If he had valid US citizenship in 2002, he would have been able to present his US Birth Certificate and apply for a US passport.He didn't. Because he couldn't."Al-Awlaki used this documentation to obtain a passport in 1993. He later corrected his place of birth to Las Cruces, New Mexico."What documentation? His social security number obtained by presenting his Yemeni passport and student visa...?Let me get this straight: he claimed (accurately) to be a Yemeni National, born in Yemen to two Yemeni parents to get a social security number issued, THEN used the social security documentation to (fraudulently) obtain as US passport in 1993....? or do they mean a Yemeni passport issued in Denver?

I doubt it.Far more likely explanation: CIA gave him a fake passport to travel to Afghanistan and back and he kept it it and set off red-flags in the system when he tried to replace it a decade later, triggering the warrent for his arrest, which goes away just in time for him to travel on a hate speech tour of Europe in 2002 - MI5 and MI6 just let him in."Prosecutors could not charge him in October 2002, when he returned from a trip abroad, because a 10-year statute of limitations on lying to the Social Security Administration had expired. The motion for rescinding the arrest warrant was approved by a magistrate judge on October 10, and filed on October 11.""According to a 2012 investigative report by Fox News, the arrest warrant for passport fraud was still in effect on the morning of Oct. 10, 2002, when FBI Agent Wade Ammerman ordered al-Aulaqi's release. U.S. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) and several congressional committees are urging FBI Director Robert Mueller to provide an explanation about the bureau’s interactions with al-Aulaqi, including why he was released from federal custody when there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest."I think we all know the answer to this one: CIA were protecting him and moving him around where they needed him most on the globe, radicalising domestic Muslim Youth, sowing the seeds for homegrown terror and adhering to the Blind Sheikh Omar Rahman model . Slick. Very slick..."ABC News reported in 2009 that the decision to cancel the arrest warrant outraged members of a Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego at the time. They were monitoring al-Aulaqi and wanted to "look at him under a microscope"."Yes, I bet they did, and I bet they were - this is evidently, a Made Guy, protected on orders right from the top.... "He's someone very important to Mr. Dulles, y'honour...""But US Attorney Gaouette said that no objection had been raised to the recission of the warrant during a meeting including Ray Fournier. He was the San Diego federal diplomatic security agent whose allegation had set in motion the effort to obtain a warrant. Gaouette said that if al-Aulaqi had been convicted at the time, he would have faced about 6 months in custody."Translation: DSA were asked to drop the case by their domestic CIA liason."The New York Times suggested later that al-Aulaqi had claimed birth in Yemen (his family's place of origin) to qualify for scholarship money granted to foreign citizens."Yeah, that's a major breach of Sharia Law - you have to sign and affirm a sworn oath and statement that you are telling the truth and he lied.That's completely haraam - forbidden. In actual fact, "Bin Laden", or someone speaking on his behalf in one of the 17 released Abbottabad documents is incensed by this, along with the same behaviour by the alleged Fort Hood Shooter and declared them both kuffur and both excommunicated them and threw them out of Al-Qaeda (of his bit of what was left of it) for bringing shame on them.Bin Laden (when he was alive) had zero tolerance for Oathbreakers and would not tolerate it amongst the brothers, as shown here:

The critique of The Yemeni Brothers begins at the 9.09 mark.

(Authors's Footnote: I believe, and I always have, both that Osama Bin Laden himself has been dead since early 2002 of untreated kidney disease in Tora Bora, and that the "Bin Laden Raid in Abbottobad (Operation Neptune Spear) was not what were told it was.)

However, I depart from both mainstream and "alternative" consensus on this issue in as much as I don't think it was what the White House and Obama's inner circle was told it was either; there have been rumours and allegations for years of continued contact and financial support for Bin Laden from family members inside Saudi Arabia, long after his official public disinheritance by the family in 1993.

I offer a more specific breakdown of my analysis of the truth, lies, myth and efficacy of the Bin Laden Myth in context with the halftruths associated with the reality of Operation Neptune Spear as an actual real event that verrifiably took place amid the Fog of War, details quickly fudged or contradicted, early accounts and minority reports burried or smeared liberally with bullshit before being burried up to its neck in classic Pentagon baloney, augmented with fake, planted stories, fake witnesses, deliberate disinformation and red herrings at length elsewhere; for now, surffice to say this - the White House by their own account was forced into a position immediately following the raid wherein they were left with no option other than to announce the successful execution (in both senses) of the Bin Laden raid far earlier than they had agreed beforehand they would be comfortable going public with the announcement and while they were still far short of meeting their own (admittedly very tough, but stringently self-imposed) criteria for confirming both the fact of both the ID on the target and the kill to a standard of accuracy all concerned would be neccessary to meet prior to public disclosure of Osama Bin Laden's death at the hands of Special Forces;

The Official History of the build-up to the go-order on the raid conceedes that those in The Room on the night were in no sense close to certain what SEAL Team 6 would encounter inside the safehouse compound once their boots hit the ground and began kicking down doors - there could be no-one there at all, the coupound itself just a dead drop for relaying messages or worse still, a baited trap. While it could be fairly safely said that there certainly seemed to be someone seemingly very important and highly furtive and secretive hiding out in there and being ultracautious when it came to living off the grid and leaving no footprints, the likelihood of it being an international arms dealer, a Taliban War Lord's lovenest or an international heroin trafficker who had developed a Howard Hughes complex were still filling out at least 30-40% probability of providing the correct answer. ID was attempted post-mortem via facial biometrics on photographs of the corpse, bloodwork, DNA and we're told fingerprinting and e fewother methods, seeking to get, if not a perfect match, then at least a finding in excess of 95% certainty across a battery of different ID methods.

They did not yet have that when the President went on television to announce that the result of the raid was unambiguously beyond reasonable doubt

As I recall bei

Given that he was still verifiably acting on behalf of CIA in influencing the outcome of the Afghan Civil War immediately post-Soviet withdrawl, given that this was three years prior to even his most moderate identification of America as the "Far Enemy", conspiring with the "Near Enemy" embodied by the corrupt absolutists rule of the House of Saud and their poor stewardship as the guardians of the Holy Sites of Mecca and Medina, from the massacre of Hajii at the Grand Mosque to the invitation of American and Coalition "Crusader" troops barracked in occupation of the lands claimed by conquest by the Prophet for his people, and given that his crossing of the Rubicon in the aftermath of the Gulf War took the form of open condemnation of the Saudi Royal Family for their refusal to acceed to his pleas to allow some basic form of opposition, it's hardly a barmstormer of an allegation to suggest that much of the wider almost-as-wealthy Bin Laden clan more than likely were in complete agreement with him and supportive of his moral stand in private, even accepting the neccessity to save face and aquiesnce to his disinheritence as a sop in deference to the reality of tribal feudal patronage in the Kingdom.

He was, after all, in the right on these points and his righteous indignation was both well earned and well-met.

I have little doubt that the Family had his back and helped out whenever they could behind the scenes, certainly until the wrath brought down by the response to the African Embassy Bombings in 1998 (which simply do not match Bin Laden's M.O. or moral code - he would have been appalled by such a senseless and random act of brutality which injured over 1000 civilian bystanders, nearly all of them fellow Muslims and is therefore condemned by multiple Haddith) forced his retreat back into Afghanistan, where the collateral cost of any American Airstrike intended for him personally (as the Clinton/Berger cruise missile strike on the Nairobi pharmaceutical factory was intended as) could be kept to to the absolute minimum.

Much has been written (and the full story yet to be told) of Osama's Jihadi glory days battling the Atheistic Soviet Hordes with his trusty AK-47, riding headlong into the fray on horseback against Russia Hinds and Anti-Personnel Cluster Bombs and other ordenance;

Rumours and sworn affidavits about from numerous US and Western members of his CIA funded tactical support effort, who talk of the man they knew as Tim Osman , adopting a nom de voyage to maintain a low profile on visits Stateside to attend specialist and tactical training, engage in tactical planning meetings with CIA brass and brief his handlers and their superiors on the reality of conditions on the ground in Afghanistan, having arrived directly from the front - most notable amongst these witnesses and anedcdotalists is Former FBI Regional Director, turned part-time Hoover apologist and freelance private investigator Ted Gunderson and whistleblowing CIA Weapons Designer, INSLAW Case witness , victim of a drugs bust frame-up and 9/11 Cassandra, Michael Rocconacioto, who both allege to have met with "Tim" in the US at this point on Company business and both also cite suppression by the FBI linking Oklahoma City with the Afghan veterans Jihadi cell of Sheikh Abdul Rahman, Zawhari's Egyptian Islamic Jihad group and Ramzi Yousef's "Bojinka" plot centring on Malaysian Airliners; several men of Middle Eastern appearance were seen in the company of Tim McVeigh and his Ryder Truck, before, during and after the home-made AMFO-Nitrate Bomb went off immediately prior to the Demolition charges taking out the first set of core columns.

And at least one credible witness, a former CIA Asset acting as a a diplomatic back-channel between the US Government and the Government of Iraq under Sadaam Hussain acting under the auspices of the Iraqi mission to the UN handling exchanges conducted under the UN "Food for Oil" (hmph) Program has stated categorically with complete certainty that she was at one time shown photos obtained or taken by CIA of Ramsey Yousef meeting in Malaysia in 1995 with Terry Nichols, the oft-forgotten "second lone nut" of Oklahoma City, currently serving life in the Federal SuperMax in Colorado, ostensibly for assisting Timmy to help load, assemble and build the Nitrate-Fuel Oil AMFO Bomb parked out in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19th, 1995, by Timothy McVeigh of US Special Forces. And "friends".

"U.S. Congressman Frank R. Wolf (R-VA) wrote in May 2010 that it was his understanding that by doing so, al-Aulaqi fraudulently obtained more than $20,000 in scholarship funds reserved for foreign students, for which he was not legally eligible."

OR: He was legally eligible for it, because he was a Yemeni National born in Yemen to two Yemeni parents, as seems to be the case and no one can produce documentation proving otherwise.

There's a lot more besides this, not least his activities in San DIego, where a domestic CIA front-Mosque was HIDING two of the future 9/11 Highjackers away from FBI, who were scouring the Earth (literally) to track them down after they lost track of them in Malaysia.

But that has no bearing on the question of if he was was a US Citizen under the protection of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights when he got whacked with a CIA Predator Drone strike in - where else? Yemen.

His HOME COUNTRY. Not that that's relevant. This is a question of rule of law and things do not look like they would go in his favour if this ever saw the inside of a court, as I'm sure is becoming increasingly apparent.

Before the final summing up one final point - someone we're forgetting in all of this...

Monday, 7 January 2013

"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important, but especially so at a moment when rights the most essential to our welfare have been violated." Thomas Jefferson, Private Letter, 1803

In 1937, The US Army - the Standing Army of the United States Government - numbered just 47,000 professional soldiers.

By the close of hostilities in the Vietnam War, the US Department of Defense had rotated over 2,000,000 troops through South East Asia during the course of the war.

BILL OF RIGHTS

[1689]

An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown

Whereas the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons assembled at Westminster, lawfully, fully and freely representing all the estates of the people of this realm, did upon the thirteenth day of February in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred eighty-eight [old style date] present unto their Majesties, then called and known by the names and style of William and Mary, prince and princess of Orange, being present in their proper persons, a certain declaration in writing made by the said Lords and Commons in the words following, viz.:

Whereas the late King James the Second, by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges and ministers employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion and the laws and liberties of this kingdom;

"And thereupon the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons, pursuant to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled in a full and free representative of this nation, taking into their most serious consideration the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties declare:

That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law;

That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;

BILL OF RIGHTS

[1789, TEXT AS RATIFIED, 1791]

Congress of the United Statesbegun and held at the City of New-York, onWednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

""For a people who are free and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. It is, therefore, incumbent on us at every meeting [of Congress] to revise the condition of the militia and to ask ourselves if it is prepared to repel a powerful enemy at every point of our territories exposed to invasion... Congress alone have power to produce a uniform state of preparation in this great organ of defense. The interests which they so deeply feel in their own and their country's security will present this as among the most important objects of their deliberation."Thomas Jefferson: 8th Annual Message, 1808.

"A militia so organized that its effective portions can be called to any point in the Union, or volunteers instead of them to serve a sufficient time, are means which may always be ready yet never preying on our resources until actually called into use. They will maintain the public interests while a more permanent force shall be in course of preparation. But much will depend on the promptitude with which these means can be brought into activity. If war be forced upon us in spite of our long and vain appeals to the justice of nations, rapid and vigorous movements in its outset will go far toward securing us in its course and issue, and toward throwing its burdens on those who render necessary the resort from reason to force."Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:425

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

Steven Unruh is having a hard time convincing anyone that he spent hours talking to Aurora theater shootings suspect James Holmes shortly after his arrest last July. Jail officials say there's no way that Unruh could have had that kind of access. Yet certain elements of the story -- which includes a description that resembles the headbanging routine that sent Holmes to the hospital last week -- have been attracting attention from law enforcement andeven families of the shooting victims."They're going to try to discredit my story," Unruh told Westword in a recent interview at the jail. "But I was able to have a four-hour talk with him. I talked him out of suicide."There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the tale presented by Unruh, a 38-year-old inmate with a long history of drug and theft charges. To begin with, his account of what Holmes supposedly told him is as bizarre as a William S. Burroughs fever dream. Also, Unruh just got out of prison last January after serving six years for methamphetamine and credit-card fraud convictions, and he says he's been diagnosed as having a bipolar condition."It's always been meth with me," he says. "If I drink a beer or something, I've got the voices in my head that drive me to do more drugs. I'm really weak-minded."He's going public with his account of an encounter with Holmes, he says, only after first trying to interest the Arapahoe County District Attorney's Office in his story. He's currently facing habitual criminal charges and had hoped to deal his way into mental health treatment rather than a twelve-year prison sentence. Although an investigator visited him, "the DA hasn't been working with me," he sighs.What Unruh can prove is that he was booked into the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office Detention Facility on drug and theft charges at 6:44 p.m. on July 19 -- just hours before the attack in Aurora at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises that left twelve dead and dozens wounded. Unruh says he was still in the booking area when officers brought in Holmes, whose head was initially covered with a hood. Although Holmes was put into a cell by himself, Unruh says inmates in the area are able to communicate by shouting through a small gap in the cell doors, which move back and forth on rails."I didn't know who he was," Unruh explains. "I could hear some black dudes yelling from the other side, 'You're a piece of shit! Kill yourself!' I had been in prison before, so they said, 'Tell this dude he's not going to be all high and mighty on the prison yard.'"Unruh says he began talking to Holmes, explaining how poorly child killers are received in prison. Jail staff quickly covered the window in Holmes' cell door with a tarp, but Unruh says he heard him pounding on the wall with his fists -- and then running, slamming his body and his head into the wall. (Unruh described this action in an interview that took place several days before Holmes reportedly engaged in similar headbanging last week.)"It went on for ten minutes before I couldn't handle it any more," Unruh says. "I told him, 'Don't be doing that. You need to repent to the people for what happened.' He asked me to do an apology letter for the kids."Captain Vince Sauter of the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office says that both the physical layout of the booking area and staff's monitoring of the area would have prevented the kind of dialogue Unruh claims. "Even if they were in booking at the same time, they couldn't shout from one cell to another like that," he says. "For someone to say they were communicating with this person -- it can't happen."Lieutenant J.D. Knight, who directly supervises booking operations, agrees. "It would be virtually impossible for Mr. Unruh to have any of the communications he has stated," he says.But Unruh insists the sporadic conversation continued even after Holmes was moved to another cell in the area. He says that Holmes told him "he felt like he was in a video game" during the shooting, that "he wasn't on his meds" and "nobody would help him." He says Holmes also mentioned NLP -- presumably, neuro-linguistic programming, a much-scorned and outmoded approach to psychotherapy -- and claimed to have been "programmed" to kill by an evil therapist."When he got out to his car, he wasn't programmed no more," Unruh says. "It sounded kind of crazy. He was trying to run it by me, basically."Unruh has a phone number that he says Holmes asked him to call. (The number connects to the cell phone of a bereavement counselor, who says she has no acquaintance with Holmes or Unruh.)He has a form that indicates James Holmes tried to send him a letter, but it was rejected by jail authorities.(Knight says he has no record of any letter sent by Holmes to Unruh, intercepted or otherwise.) He claims to have received messages from Holmes via other inmates since that night, but he admits he doesn't know if the sender was actually Holmes.Still, Unruh's story seems to have drawn interest in one unlikely quarter. He says Holmes told him he "walked up and down the aisles" of the theater three times before he opened fire, and that detail, if true, might have some bearing on the pending litigation by victims' families against the theater chain. Unruh has paperwork indicating that he's been in communication with at least one family member on that point.Unruh's story may well prove to be nonsense. Whether it's his nonsense or Holmes's own, the lack of answers in the Aurora tragedy has some people looking for whatever answers can be found.http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/11/james_holmes_inmate_confession_suicide_aurora_theater_shooting.phphttp://www.cudoctors.com/find-a-doctor/profile/?providerID=2252http://www.cusomgateway.com/uploaded-provider-files/2252/Fenton%20-%20Biosketch.pdf